I heard the end of the 2014 World Series on Thursday morning in Abu Dhabi — Wednesday night in Kansas City, where the San Francisco Giants defeated the Royals 3-2 to win the championship for the third time in five years.

I preferred the Giants. The Dodgers’ arch-rival, sure, but a National League team, and a team without Barry Bonds, so I’m fine with it, and with Madison Bumgarner’s amazing October. But the fact remains that in none of those three championship seasons did they have the best record in the NL.

And I have been thinking about how baseball seems to be moving towards a place where someone other than the best team in each league wins the World Series.

Some numbers.

–Since the turn of the century, only seven teams who had the best record in their league reached the World Series. From 31.

–Since the turn of the century, only three teams who had (or shared) the best record in baseball won the World Series. (Boston in 2007, who shared best record with Cleveland; New York Yankees in 2009, Boston in 2013.)

–Since the turn of the century, 11 wild-card teams played in the World Series.

–Since the turn of the century, five wild-card teams have won the World Series (Angels in 2002, Florida in 2003, Boston in 2004, St. Louis in 2011, San Francisco in 2014).

So it seems that, over the past 15 seasons, anyway, wild-card teams have a better chance of both making the World Series and winning it than do the best regular-season teams. And I don’t like it.

I suppose this demonstrates that I am nostaligic for baseball before 1969 — when the teams with the best records played in the World Series.

Now, with four wild cards per year, two of them will reach the division series having already won a playoffs game, which seemed to help both the Giants and Royals this year. And, now, the Best Team in the League is just one of five teams from that league who can reach the World Series. And all the Best Team gets is home-field advantage.

I must concede I was impressed by both the Giants and Royals, who seemed built for the playoffs. They did just enough to make the playoffs, then they took teams with many of the best qualities of successful playoff teams (good defense, decent offenses not built around 2-3 hitters, great relief pitching, one elite starter), and got to the end. The difference was the Giants’ elite starter was available to work in Game 7 and the Royals’ elite starter (Yordano Ventura) was not.

This wasn’t the first time two wild-card teams made the World Series. That was 2002, when the Angels and Giants played. But those Angels won 99 games and those Giants won 95. That doesn’t bother me as much.

The 2014 Royals won 89 and and the Giants won 88. That they were there at the end does bother me.

What we now have, as I wrote in a comment piece for The National, is a system that seems increasingly divorced from an emphasis on the regular season, and winning as many as possible — the history of baseball, that is. When is seems clear that what really matters is just getting to the playoffs.